Wallop

Rivers of ink spurted from Geneva last week as into action sprang charming Mme Genevieve Tabouis, brightest spirit among that sector of correspondents who feel that they can mold a better world by twisting every story to the advantage of the League of Nations. They felt with an honest, apostolic zeal that they must kill "The Deal" by which Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of Great Britain and Premier Pierre Laval of France had undertaken to make peace between Italy and Ethiopia at the latter's expense. Before the terms were officially known Mme Tabouis of Paris' Oeuvre and her group, some of whom have recently been threatened with discharge by their editors for corkscrew reporting, were busy making headlines: "PEACE PLAN FACES TROUBLE IN GENEVA," "FEAR OF PROPOSAL FADES," and then as the text became public, "DETAILS AMAZE GENEVA," "PEACE PLAN HELD DOOMED."

The Deal, In sophisticated circles the main objective of Pierre ("Honest Broker") Laval last week was seen to be to halt the relentless march of League of Nations committees toward harsher & harsher Sanctions and to tie a knot in the banner of British idealism which has been unfurled at Geneva by handsome young Captain Anthony Eden. More specifically M. Laval was out to prevent the League from applying the crucial oil Sanction scheduled for last week. Released with the formal imprimatur of Britain and France, The Deal accomplished this initial purpose of abruptly halting for the first time the march toward stiffer Sanctions.

Last week nothing whatever was done about oil. It continued to flood into Fascist Italy from the Soviet Union, the U. S., the British Empire, The Netherlands, Venezuela, Rumania, etc.

The terms which achieved this Sanctions breathing spell are subject to any amount of revision but of basic and lasting importance are formal pledges set forth in the opening sentences of Part One and Part Two of The Deal.

Part One: "The Governments of Great Britain and France agree to recommend to His Majesty the Emperor of Ethiopia acceptance of the following exchanges of territory between Ethiopia and Italy."

In Part Two an equally momentous pledge was officially phrased in two ways, one way for Rome, the other for Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie read:

"The United Kingdom and French Governments recommend that His Majesty the Emperor accept and will use their influence to secure the approval by the League of Nations of the formation in Southern Ethiopia of a zone of economic expansion and settlement reserved to Italy."

Benito Mussolini read: "The United Kingdom and French Governments will use their influence at Addis Ababa and Geneva to the end that the formation in Southern Ethiopia of a zone of economic expansion and settlement reserved to Italy should be accepted by His Majesty the Emperor and approved by the League of Nations."

These solemn pledges having been entered into with due form last week, and copies having been handed by the British and French Ambassadors to Benito Mussolini across the Dictator's massive oak table in Palazzo Venezia, much had irrevocably changed. Mme Genevieve Tabouis herself knew that at the very least the bargaining position of Italy in whatever settlement is eventually reached had been immeasurably strengthened. It seemed likely that Britain and France had deliberately offered Italy more than they themselves would be ready to let her have, trusting to the League of Nations to seek and obtain credit for trimming down The Deal into something more modest.

"Exchange." As the terms stood last week, Ethiopia would "exchange" some 60,000 of her least fertile square miles for 3,000 barren square miles of Italian Eritrea so located as to give landlocked Ethiopia a corridor to the Red Sea. Ethiopia would also throw in 160,000 more square miles, some of it desert but containing some of her richest and most fertile territory, as an Italian Sphere of Colonization & Influence. As the boundary of this sphere at one point would be only 75 miles from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Government would be clearly at the mercy of Italy.

Quite apart from and long before negotiation of The Deal, the League of Nations Committee of Five decided last autumn that Ethiopia is a country of such backwardness as to require the intervention and assistance of foreign powers in the names of Progress and Humanity. It was the consensus at Geneva that this work should be undertaken by multinational consent and that Italians, Swedes, Britons, Belgians, Bulgarians, Frenchmen, Czechoslovaks and other assorted "advisers" to Emperor Haile Selassie were to concoct in Ethiopia the enlightened hodgepodge of Civilization.

The feature of The Deal which last week left the minor nations simply aghast is that on its face it is 100% to the advantage of Italy with no look-in for anybody else. Therefore, as a matter of practical European politics, The Deal is a most unusual, impractical and unprecedented scheme which will certainly have to be tinkered from one end to the other amid piercing squawks.

Trap v. Trap. With homely humor in Geneva last week peasant-born French Premier Laval had an aching tooth yanked out with old-fashioned pain because he claimed that an anesthetic would have dulled his brain when he needed all his wits about him to handle Captain Anthony Eden.

There was no outward evidence, however, that the two statesmen were in any great disharmony. They arrived by the same train and played diplomatic ball with each other for two days in the evidently prearranged procedure of stalling action on The Deal and on further Sanctions as long as possible so that world public opinion could settle down as it does after any piece of shady business.

A trap all ready for Emperor Haile Selassie waited to be sprung in case he should officially reject The Deal. It might then be eloquently said by Orator Laval that since Ethiopia had flouted and rejected "a peaceful solution conceived within the framework of the League," that affronted entity must turn the blade of Sanctions against Ethiopia and away from Italy in case Il Duce should accept the "good offices" of Britain and France within that framework. Into this trap last week the wily Ethiopian did not walk. Informally to correspondents His Majesty excoriated The Deal but he did not officially reject it. Neither did Dictator Mussolini officially accept it or even permit himself to be informally quoted. Everyone stalled.

Ethiopia's Emperor, advised by his Maine Yankee alter ego, Mr. Everett Colson, set the counter trap of demanding in a cablegram to Geneva that The Deal be scrutinized by the entire League Assembly in which minor nations have the majority, though they have never dared to make effective use of it. If once he could get 40 or even 30 little nations squawking. Emperor Haile Selassie knew they could be counted on to make the world's welkin ring in his favor.

Chairman of the League Council today is Dr. Eduard Benes, now being actively groomed for election as President of Czechoslovakia, famed as "Europe's Smartest Little Statesman." When Dr. Benes received last week the Emperor's demand that the Assembly be convened "immediately" it was second nature to him to have Secretary General Joseph Avenol cable back immediately to Addis Ababa that the League Council, generally dominated by the Great Powers, could scarcely be expected to convene the Assembly before itself deliberating so important a question. This maneuver effectively put the League of Nations into a dead stall at least until this week.

"Horizontal Issue." Neutral observers throughout Europe noted mournfully last week that the Ethiopian Question seemed to have become a ''horizontal issue," not so much dividing the nations of Europe as internationally splitting social layers. Broadly speaking, the upper classes, from Scotland to the Golden Horn, and the governments of nations ruled by aristocrats and the bourgeoisie were for peace at the price of partitioning Ethiopia to make a Fascist holiday. Broadly speaking the proletariat, the lower classes and nations governed by Socialists (such as the Scandinavian kingdoms) were for delivering the death blow to original Fascism by means of Sanctions and then civilizing Ethiopia in a community spirit.

Painful was the distress in Washington of kindly Secretary of State Cordell Hull. He has been receiving cold advance dope from Ambassador Breckinridge Long in Rome for two months that The Deal was on its way, but as a gentleman he found himself unable to believe anything so unflattering to his gentlemen friends and the gentlemen friends of Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham in the London Government. Paradoxically, able Ambassador Breckinridge Long has been getting much of his cold dope from British Ambassador Eric Drummond, now in Rome after 14 years as Secretary General of the League of Nations. It was Sir Eric who handed over the table to Il Duce last week one of the hardest wallops Geneva has yet received.

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